I Remember Jazz Read online

  I Remember Jazz

  Other Books by Al Rose

  New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album

  Storyville, New Orleans

  Eubie Blake: A Biography

  Bom in New Orleans: Two Centuries of Notables

  Al Rose

  I Remember Jazz

  Six Decades Among the Great Jazzmen

  Louisiana State University Press

  Baton Rouge and London

  Copyright © 1987 by Louisiana State University Press

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Designer: Laura Roubiquc

  Typeface: Electra

  Typesetter: G & S Typesetters, Inc.

  Printer: Thomson-Shore, Inc.

  Binder: John Dekker & Sons

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Rose, Al.

  I remember jazz.

  Includes index.

  1. Jazz music. 2. Jazz musicians. I. Title.

  ML3506.R68 1986 785.42’0092’2 [B] 86-15307

  ISBN 0-8071-1315-8

  ISBN 0-8071-2571-7 (pbk)

  This book is affectionately dedicated to my good friends Allan and Sandra Jaffe, proprietors of Preservation Hall, who somehow keep the music alive.

  Contents

  Preface

  A Note on Vernacular

  Jelly Roll Morton

  John Casimir

  Frankie Newton

  Jack “Papa” Laine

  Bill Russell

  Mezz Mezzrow

  Bobby Hackett

  Alphonse Picou

  Irving Fazola

  Oran “Hot Lips” Page

  Tony Parenti

  Dan Burley

  Allan Jaffe

  Louis Prima

  Adrian Rollini

  Stephane Grappelle

  George Cvetkovich

  Sidney Bechet

  Tom Brown

  George Girard

  James P. Johnson

  Chris Burke

  Eddie Condon

  Bunny Berigan

  Alvin Alcorn

  Muggsy Spanier

  Wild Bill Davison

  Joe Mares

  Harry Truman

  Jack Teagarden

  Eubie Blake

  The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

  Armand J. Piron

  The Candy Man

  Bunk Johnson

  Edmond Souchon

  Pee Wee Spitlera

  Morten Gunnar Larsen

  Danny Barker

  George Baquet

  Louis Armstrong

  Knocky Parker

  Johnny Wiggs

  Jean Christophe Averty

  Eddie Miller

  Raymond Burke

  Spencer Williams

  Pierre Atlan

  Claude Luter

  W.C. Handy

  David Thomas Roberts

  Chink Martin

  Walter Bowe

  “Buglin’ Sam” Dekemel

  Harry Shields

  Johnny St. Cyr

  Sharkey Bonano

  Armand Hug

  Earl “Fatha” Hines

  Gene Krupa

  The Exterminators: Pete Fountain and Al Hirt

  Dizzy Gillespie

  Miffi Mole

  Clarence Williams

  The Dixieland Rhythm Kings

  The Brunies

  Paul Barbarin

  Neighborhoods

  Lagniappe

  Afterword

  Index

  Illustrations

  Following pages 25

  79

  133

  187

  Preface

  Sure I remember jazz. I remember more than sixty years of it—from the time I was a kid standing on a French Quarter banquette in New Orleans listening to the breathtaking band that played for dancing on the second floor of the Fern Cafe No. 2 to the ones I tried futilely to put together in the 1980s, combing the lists to find seven good men and true who could, one more time, quicken this fading pulse. Of course, I’m talking about genuine, unhyphenated jazz—not modern, not progressive, not fusion, New Wave, blues, or swing. Just jazz. Only jazz is jazz.

  I have worked with jazzmen through concerts, recording sessions, radio, television, movies, and promotions. I have roistered with them on planes, trains, buses, boats, and taxis here and abroad. I have gotten bombed with them in low-class dives and classy saloons in New York, Rangoon, the Louisiana bayous, Dallas, and Singapore. I’ve filled out their social security applications, bailed them out of jail, stood up for them at weddings, carried their caskets, and run interference for them through mobs of rabid fans. I have introduced them on the nation’s most prestigious stages, from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. I have written about them, composed songs they played and sang, gotten visas extended for the foreign ones, patched up domestic difficulties, broken up fights, tried to protect them from the worst of the exploiters.

  But, best of all, I’ve listened to them. I’ve listened not only to their hopes and aspirations, their tales of woe, their philosophical observations, their complaints and exultations. I’ve listened to the sound of their music, which is really all that ever matters—either to me or to them.

  Time has demonstrated that the public, the people who have delighted in these sounds, collected the records, gone to the festivals, want more than the music. They long to know more about the men and the lives that created their music. To meet that demand, the recent past has presented an impressive library of historical and biographical works relating to the people who made the music. There have been some autobiographies, too, which generally prove to be the least reliable information sources.

  I put this book together because every time I attend a jazz function—whether as a host, a speaker, a panelist, a master of ceremonies, or merely a ticket holder—people constantly ask me to share my recollections about my six decades of involvement with the musicians.

  Of course, the transient nature of the lives of jazz people rarely permits long-lasting, close personal relationships, though I’ve had my share of those, too. So what I have to tell isn’t always incisive or analytical. I have undertaken to tell just one or two things about each of the many musicians I’ve had dealings with. These vignettes haven’t been published before, though some folks might have heard me relate some of them at private or public functions, or even, from time to time, on the radio.

  This book is only as autobiographical as it needs to be. After all, I’m telling about the musicians, not about Al Rose, but I do have to tell a couple of relevant things about him in order to make sense of the stories.

  I was born in New Orleans in 1916. The first band I remember was the pit orchestra in my grandfather’s Dauphine Theater. I remember several musicians who played in it—jazzmen like Martin Abraham, Tony Parenti, Wilbur Dinkel. I was four years old. During the same early years, I remember bands parading in the streets. I didn’t then know the name of my favorite one, but I later discovered it had been led by Buddy Petit.

  I never made—or tried to make—a nickel out of jazz. Directly or indirectly, the musicians got every cent their performances brought in when they worked under my auspices. Concerts, record sessions, all belonged to them. I have been fortunate enough to have unrelated skills that kept me and my family reasonably prosperous so that my jazz activity stayed free of commercial restraints. My greatest satisfaction has been in the production of what I like to think were among the best jazz records ever made and in seeing the books I wrote in print, knowing how they’re appreciated by the world’s jazz fans.

  I’ve made sure, here, to include no secondhand tales. There’s no hearsay in these pages. It’s made u
p of nothing but things that took place between the world’s greatest jazzmen and me. I hope you like it.

  A Note on Vernacular

  The reader with a reasonably close-hand relationship to the world of jazz may find that the way I’ve quoted the musicians doesn’t ring altogether true. That’s because I have deleted most of the obscenities—in the interest of brevity rather than prudery. Had I included every scatalogical utterance of the New Orleans musicians alone, this book would have been many pages longer. I have translated those otherwise speechless jazzmen for whom profanity seems to be the mother tongue, seeking to preserve their meaning rather than the total effect of their informal speech.

  A Lonnie Johnson, reading somebody the “dirty dozens,” has the effect of suggesting an entirely new art form, and ordinary conversation with any Brunies was a dizzying descent into the lowliest gutters. If we were awarding medals of distinction for the most colorful and original use of obnoxious language, we’d have been hard put to choose among Wingy Mannone, Louis Prima, and Danny Alvin, the Chicago drummer. Wild Bill Davison would have to qualify for at least an honorable mention. Of course, there were a few from whom I never heard an indecent word. Eubie Blake might occasionally have said damn behind his hand. Bud Freeman, Bobby Hackett, Knocky Parker, and Doc Evans all had sufficiently sophisticated vocabularies to allow them to express themselves concisely without the use of obscenity. Most of the musicians eschewed swearing in front of the ladies, but our blue ribbon winners were ahead of their times in accepting women as equals, at least insofar as language went.

  One other thing. Lots of jazzmen, I suppose because they rarely associated with ordinary people, always had a certain jargon, which was intelligible only to other jazzmen, usually in the same area. Therefore, I refrained from writing a Dan Burley comment that included such phrases as “a deuce of treys on the backbeat” or “the Apples trash pile,” simply because I didn’t want to have to stop and translate. In the thirties, I’d have had to do an extended glossary about terms like icky, longhair, collegiate hot, just as the forties hot men had the word square all to themselves for a fleeting period. If I had reported it all really faithfully, this book would probably have cost you an extra five.

  I Remember Jazz

  Jelly Roll Morton

  Try to forget for a moment that he was a musician who had a profound effect on American culture, that he was a pimp and a pool hustler who was racist in his attitudes. Just for now, forget his conviction that blacks were inherently inferior beings. What kind of man was he under all this? Perhaps the following incidents will add to an eventual full-length portrait of this extraordinary individual.

  I was backstage at the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia talking with the proprietor, Sam Steifel, about vaudeville bookings in his theaters. It was a day in the early spring of 1938, slightly past noon. Jelly Roll Morton walked purposefully by on his way to what passed for a men’s room in that decaying structure. I had never laid eyes on him before. I’m not sure I’d even seen his picture. If I had I hadn’t noticed it. But I knew I was looking at a star. He had the bearing and the manner—and certainly the clothes.

  “Good evenin’,” he said as he passed. I knew right then he was New Orleans; only Orleanians say “Good evenin’” at lunch time.

  Sam didn’t introduce us. He said, “That’s Jelly Roll Morton. You ever hear him play?”

  “Only on records,” I answered.

  “You think he’s pretty good?” Steifel pursued.

  “Yeah,” I said, absently. In fact, up to that moment I hadn’t paid too much attention to his playing, though I owned lots of his records. From my twenty-two-year-old vantage point, Jelly was merely an historical figure who, by musical standards, must surely have been artistically surpassed in skill and concepts by stars of my generation. After all, change and progress are inevitable, aren’t they?

  As it turned out, despite the knowledge I had gained in my full score and two, I still had a lot to learn about listening to and appreciating music. Sam invited me to stay around and watch the show. He said he’d like to know what I thought about it.

  I stayed and watched Jelly Roll leading a band of mediocre musicians. I never asked who they were, but I assumed that if I didn’t know them they were nobody. I wasn’t impressed with Jelly Roll’s piano playing, but I told Steifel the show was great and that I especially enjoyed the comedy of Eddie Anderson, who was on the threshold of fame as Jack Benny’s Rochester. I don’t think I commented about the band.

  That night I had agreed to meet with Reese Dupree, an elderly fellow who was the composer of record of the “Dupree Blues” and “Short’nin’ Bread.” We were to meet in the Showboat Room of the Douglass Hotel, the leading black hostelry in town. Reese was always promoting something. This time he had an Ellington concert on his mind, and he wanted me to be his partner in sponsoring this venture.

  Now I was dressed, according to my normal practice in those years, in the high fashion of the day. And I must impose for a moment on the reader’s patience by describing the details of my sartorial elegance, because it’s relevant to the story.

  There was a tailor in Philadelphia who sometimes used photographs of me in his window in the fond belief, or so he said, that my irresistible appearance would attract customers into his shop. The legend above the photo identified me as “Impresario Al Rose. Suit by Mike the Tailor.” By agreement, I got forty percent off the price of any suit I ordered.

  One day Mike said to me, “Al, I’ve got a real impressive piece of imported English goods. It’s a remnant, but I might have enough for a three-piece suit. You wanna see?”

  In those days that was a lure I couldn’t resist.

  The “goods” turned out to be a polychromatic, green-striped worsted, truly beautiful. Mike had no trouble selling it to me. The suit was finished two weeks later on the day of my appointment with Reese Dupree.

  “Look,” Mike had suggested (a good tailor knows how to flatter his clients), “I don’t have to tell you what looks good, but I’d like you to consider a pink shirt with this, with a white detached collar and a dubonnet tie, handkerchief, and buttonhole. Can you see it?”

  I could see it. Cordovan shoes, too.

  So when I joined Reese in the Douglass, that’s what I was wearing. I couldn’t help being aware of the contrast I made with Dupree, whose suits always looked like mattress covers. I was ever so conscious of such matters in 1938.

  We had just begun to talk when I noticed a flurry of activity in the entrance. Two noisy, light brown ladies, both grossly overpainted, came in; they were followed by none other than Jelly Roll Morton. He and Reese saw each other and exchanged waves as Jelly escorted his two friends to a table, then returned to have a word with Dupree. I was impressed with the elegance of Jelly’s attire—very much impressed, indeed. Polychromatic, green-striped suit, pink shirt with detached white collar, dubonnet tie, buttonhole, and handkerchief—and even a pair of cordovan shoes. Obviously there had been more than a single suit in Mike’s remnant. Jelly Roll appeared equally impressed with my attire.

  He shook hands with Reese, who then introduced us. Jelly and I had both begun to laugh, and Dupree became uncomfortable, fearing that our joke might have been on him. Reese was not one to notice how people dressed. In a moment, Jelly got up to join his party; as he said goodbye he leaned over and said quietly in my ear, “Next time you see Mike the Tailor, you tell him I’m gonna kick his ass.”

  That’s how I met Jelly Roll Morton. I was delighted with his sparkling good humor and his easy manner. He seemed much younger than his fifty-three years. He related to those around him in the sort of old, universal show-business style I had already encountered in other successful jazzmen.

  I saw him again, briefly, at the Rhythm Club in Harlem. Eubie Blake had taken me there expressly to demonstrate his own mastery of the cue stick. The way it worked out, I never did get to see Eubie shoot pool, but I had the opportunity to watch with fascination as Fletcher Henderson demolished Jel
ly Roll on the green felt and walked away with a large handful of Jelly’s cash in his fist.

  Jelly stopped where we were sitting and said, “Smack is the luckiest goddamn hustler I ever saw. Now he thinks he can beat me!” He paused to see if we understood how ridiculous that idea was. “’Course, everybody gets lucky sometime.”

  As Jelly walked away, Eubie said, “Smack [Henderson] beats everybody. Jelly never wins from him.”

  • • •

  In 1939 I was a delegate to the KEEP AMERICA OUT OF WAR convention in Washington, D.C. My hotel room had in it a flyer announcing:

  THE JUNGLE CLUB

  JELLY ROLL MORTON (IN PERSON)

  AT THE PIANO

  The flyer gave an address on U Street. I think it was a Tuesday night when I paid a cab driver and found myself standing on this unattractive street making a decision about whether it was worth going up the narrow staircase of the dingy building to the Jungle Club on the second floor. Even though it was about ten o’clock, I heard no sounds of music. I was about to turn and leave just as Jelly Roll joined me in the doorway.

  “I remember you,” he said. “You’re Eubie Blake’s friend. It’s pretty early for things to start around here. Come on up and I’ll show you the place.”

  He had his keys out as we went up the stairs. He opened the door to display the poorly executed African jungle decor. With an all-encompassing sweep of his hand to indicate the grandeur of what I was seeing, he announced, “All genuine bamboo..”

  In 1939, the cheapest furniture you could find was “genuine bamboo.” It was the hallmark of poverty—certainly nothing to boast about. But Jelly seemed oblivious to all that.

  “A dollar cover charge,” he informed me. “The first drink is free. After that, it’s sixty cents a shot.”

  “Cover charge?” I inquired. “You’ve got a show?”

  “I’m the show,” he assured me. “Jelly Roll Morton in Person.”

  I gave him a dollar, and he asked what I was drinking. I asked for Laird’s Applejack, which he didn’t have, then settled for Canadian Club and soda. He settled himself down on his piano stool. The piano was an antique upright that had obviously had a lot of work done on it. We were still alone. I was the only customer. That scene would be duplicated on many succeeding nights.